The word of Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws was assuredly not to be trusted on most things. On one subject, however, Robert Louis Stevenson's miserly old miscreant spoke true. "They're fine halesome food – they're grand food, parritch," he pronounces to his nephew David. And who, these cold December mornings, can disagree? Everything has its own season, and winter is porridge time, the part of the year when the inner warmth of a good bowl of porridge really can beat the outside cold, sustaining body and soul for more hours than more fashionable breakfasts – and more healthily too. Not everything that swells and bubbles on the hob in the name of porridge is the real thing, though. Merely adding boiling water to a supermarket cardboard pot purporting to be porridge may be convenient, but it hardly approaches the nourishment or satisfaction of the homemade variety. Authentic porridge is not difficult, however. F Marian McNeill, in her 1929 classic The Scots Kitchen (still in print) advises a cupful of water, a pinch of salt and a handful of oatmeal per person. The oatmeal, though, must be of special quality. Midlothian oats, presumably easily obtained near the House of Shaws, are "unsurpassed the world over", she writes. Whether they are stirred in with a wooden spoon or, as McNeill advises, with a spurtle or a gruel-tree (Shetland usage) is probably optional, but the addition of cream or milk – never sugar – completes a winter experience that can only be described as truly halesome.

• This article was amended on 19 December 2011 to correct the name of writer of The Scots Kitchen from F Marian Mitchell, to F Marian McNeill.